the twilight zone

I absolutely love to eat out.
I'm the person that always leaves a good tip, loves to smile at the waiter or waitress, oohs and aahs at every tasty thing, and looks forward eagerly to the next stage of the meal, particularly the finishing cup of coffee with cream and sugar.
I don't have bad times at restaurants. I just don't. I always enjoy it. I know what to expect, I know how the system works...it's all pretty standard and I know what I like to eat, so I'm hardly ever disappointed.
Since moving to Virginia, we've had a great time experimenting with new places. We haven't loved and raved about every single one, but for the most part, we really enjoy the restaurants we've been to.
I think I've only written one bad review on this blog.

Well, buckle up, sailor, because you're about to enter...
THE DINING TWILIGHT ZONE.

It all started on one eerie Thursday night. It happened to be Valentine's Day, which would have explained the fancy way we were dressed, and all the pink and red being worn.
The amazing dress was bought weeks in advance, the anticipation for being worn growing with each passing day. The suit and tie was worn from morning to date -- one of the perks of being in law school and dressing up every day, there's no need for an outfit change for a fancy date night.

The drive: 19.9 miles, approximately 30 minutes.

Bedford.

Reservations had been made in anticipation for this night, and nothing could go wrong.
Reviews were raving, main street was hopping, bedford was charming and the restaurant was darling.
All the proper ingredients for an evening of romance.

Flowers adorned our corner table, and the other chairs throughout the restaurant were decorated with smiling people paired off in sweet couples or laughing in large groups.

7:15 - We sat on the same side of the table, the booth side.
Maybe that's where we went wrong.
Maybe, in the Big Book of Restaurant Voodoo, a curse befalls those who cuddle.
We'll never really know.

The restaurant was chatty and loud and clinking, so we sat side by side, perusing the menu and whispering sweet nothings. Like, "Cake". And "Creme Brulee".

7:22 - A woman arrives. She looks innocent enough. She informs us that she is not our waitress, but would love to take our drink order.
Water for me, cola for him.
7:30 - Our true waitress presents herself, helping us decide what to eat and how to decide between which steak and which seafood dish. She's quiet. Her eyes whisper evil. We order.
Appetizers: wedge salad for me, crab mac & cheese for him/us.
Entrees: salmon for me, steak for him.

A Valentine's Day card, for him:
And then the prince and the princess rode off into the sunset,
stopped at Ye Olde Pizza Shoppe on the way to the castle...
...and spent the evening in their leisure cloaks,
snuggling on the royal sofa and watching movies on the imperial flat screen.
Ours is my favorite fairy tale.

7:40 - The table to our left becomes occupied, with a sweet and rich-looking couple. They're visited by a neighboring couple, and the wife is wearing a fur coat. They mention their daughter lives in San Francisco and is working for Google. They're fancy. The table to our right seats a group of four, they receive their entrees.
A neighboring waitress notices our drinks are gone, offers to get us refills and more bread.
Bread? What bread? our stomachs cry.
Refills and smiles arrive for the tables to our right and left.

8:00 - The salad and mac & cheese arrive. Delightful. We scarf them down with reckless abandon.
Tables around us empty; the table to our left receives their appetizers.
We ask a next-door waitress for refills.

8:10 - Our waitress returns, just as we've forgotten her face. We introduce ourselves.
We ask her for more bread. She nods, avoiding eye contact.
Our food will be out shortly.
Lies.

8:20 - We get more bread. The sweet nothings are becoming less pleasant. Like "Vegan cake", and "Sugarless pudding".
The table to our left receives their entrees.

8:30 - The table to our right is enjoying their desserts and wine.

8:45 - We make awkward eye contact multiple times with our waitress, who hasn't come across the invisible line in the middle of the restaurant for half an hour.
We start to realize she's cast some spell on us - we are invisible and unable to communicate with anyone around us.
This is confirmed as the man next to us drunkenly yells, "where'd that weird young couple go!"
Or maybe that was just my imagination.
The table to our left receives their desserts and fresh coffee with cream and sugar.

8:50 - Dusty's eyes start to bulge and his wisdom-teethless cheeks look angry. I try to calm him down but all I can say is, "Bullion cubes", which aren't even sweet at all.

9:00 - A strange, gangly bus boy comes to our table. "Just to make sure - you guys have not received your food, correct?"
Dusty's imagination is running violently amuck and can be seen clearly through his eyeballs and I have to quickly answer, "No!" before he says anything.
The table to our left is now empty.

9:10 - Dusty fights his way across the cursed restaurant barrier, pushing back a troll and smiting a flock of fairies before he reaches the dungeon keeper, victorious.
He lets her know we would like to leave. We do not want our food, we just want to go home.
NEVER! she shouts, Dusty does a counter-spell, she softens, and says, yes. Yes. We will box up your food.
No, we don't want it. Dusty shakes his head. We just want to go home.
It's a busy night, the kitchen is backed up...
Righteous indignation flashes, No. No, it's not. We've seen successful eating, drinking, and happily leaving all evening. Particularly with that blasted table to our left. Do not lie to me.
She breaks down.
Take it all, all for free. 

9:30 - We pull out of the parking lot, cold and feeling weird. The Twilight Zone. 

I still have no explanations for any of the night's events. I'd like to think we were somehow invisible, that there must have been some kind of mix-up...it was one of the strangest experiences of my life.
We were just flat-out ignored all night long. We were exhausted and totally bummed out.
Luckily, the owner handled it well...she admitted that she had no good excuse, and that sometimes things just didn't go right. She gave us our food boxed up, and comped the entire meal. She even threw in a $25 gift card.

On the way home, we sang together, ran through McDonald's for cookies and shakes, and cuddled up at home.
Overall, I can't complain too much. It may have been a kind of wasted evening but I still have an amazing husband who makes even bad adventures a heck-of-a-lot better. :)

And I got to wear the anticipated dress.

We're planning on getting dressed up again, same outfits, and going out to a local restaurant for another fun dinner this weekend.
And meanwhile, I got to feel super fancy at work today with my salmon and potatoes for lunch!

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!
How was your night??

In love,
Cait

life lately

Top of the morning to ya!

I finally did it.
I convinced Dusty that being a man and carrying an umbrella were completely compatible.
As an early Valentine's Day gift, I got him this ultra-manly black umbrella, with a curved wooden handle.
It's really perfect.
The brand is also called "totes", which I gotta kick out of, because it's one of those obnoxious abbreviations for "totally" that we use really often because it makes us laugh. "Totes def!"
Yeah, that's really obnoxious. But I still giggle.

Otherwise, our week has been lovely.

It's actually warmed up finally, so we're thrilled! We even went and had snow cones yesterday.

One of the things I love about Instagram is that it is a timeline of my daily life.

It's all the "important" things that happen to me in a week.

But not really, because a lot of it is just pictures of my food and my coffee cup and maybe what I'm wearing that day - but all bunched together, it gives a really good impression of what life was like in my last 7 days.

Cutesie little snapshots of my point of view.

Naysayers may think it tricks people into thinking really stupid and mundane things are really interesting, but I take the flip approach - it teaches me to be more attentive to the smaller things I might usually overlook, or not appreciate. 

Because let's face it, pictures are memories. Memories fade and are inaccurate and sometimes are forgotten altogether. Brains are unreliable. 

And while I do think technology has taken over our lives and we sometimes forget that life is happening outside of our touchscreens, having an iPhone has allowed me to capture thousands more fun little moments that are now tucked away in a little treasure box called Instagram. 

And being the sentimental person that I am, I love looking back through our time in Virginia and remembering that little random cafe we went to, or the hilarious thing Luna was doing, or that night we made dinner together and sat watching our favorite show for hours, holding hands in our PJs. 

I suppose I've transferred my pack-ratty nature into pictures, but I'll tell ya, it's a lot easier to store digital files than it is to hold on to every gift, note, letter, and stuffed animal I've ever received. 

Cheers to another great week!
In love,
Cait

i love food

A "date night" almost always involves food -- but I'm convinced that even if lunch or dinner wasn't an expectation for a date, I would make it one. I somehow always manage to point everything back to food.
And don't worry -- I'm still within the average weight for my age and height, although I might not be without constant supervision.
Lucky for me, we went to a stellar restaurant for Valentine's Day!

We got dressed up all fancy (which meant staying in our school/work clothes, actually) and headed out to our surprise dinner location! All I knew was that we had a reservation somewhere...

 

We ended up at an Italian Bistro called Isabella's.

I had actually never heard of this place before, except through facebook, when one of our friends posted how excited she was to be going there for Valentine's Day. (I think we seemed a little stalker-ish, when we realized we were also both going to the same showing of "The Vow" right after dinner...)

The restaurant is so nice. It's about 15 minutes away, and look how adorable?

I never would have guessed this little gem was hidden inside this strip of stores. The inside was romantic and candelit, and had such a nice cozy layout.

 

A restaurant is really only as good as it's beginning bread.

So we knew instantly that this was going to be fantastic.





I got the best salad while we were there. It was a fig and gorgonzola salad, with candied walnuts and an apple dressing. It was so delicious! Right up my alley.

Dusty got the Lobster Bisque (so proud of him, and his seafood-loving ways).

We dined, and laughed, and enjoyed the atmosphere. We were quite fancy, really.
SO fancy, in fact, that I was even wearing lipstick.
You should know that this is unprecedented, except when previously forced.

And since both of us love carbs, erego we love pasta, we decided that this trip to Isabella's should be properly Italian.

My mouth is watering again.

(That really is kind of a gross phrase, I apologize.)

I'm going to skip any kind of ado, and just copy and paste the actual menu description here:

Caitlin ordered:

Roasted Butternut Squash & Sage Pasta 
linguine tossed with roasted butternut squash, sage, parmesan, and brown butter; toasted walnuts

Dusty ordered:
Spicy Chicken & Sausage Orecchiette 

Italian sausage and white meat chicken in a light garlic & parmesan cream sauce

We both ended up agreeing that Dusty's was better overall, but oh, oh, oh, they were so good.

Something about the spicy sausage with the creamy sauce in Dusty's dish was addicting.

Or maybe it was just the pasta. :)

I've already gone this far, so I may as well show you the delectable dessert we devoured.

I'm a coffee person. If you don't know this about me, we're probably not friends...

There are two things I love most in the taste-bud world. Coffee, and spicyness. I started eating salsa around the time I learned how to talk, and started drinking coffee around age 10 - they're the two things Dusty has never tried to talk me out of having on a regular basis.

I think he thinks I'm cute or something :)

So with my cappuccino in hand, we both shared the fluffiest, creamiest, most delightful mocha cheesecake on the planet. Truly, truly, what a cloud would taste like if you soaked it in java. And butter. And cream, maybe, too.

Happy day :)

Bravo, Isabella's. We'll be back.

In love,
Cait

My Funny Valentine

Happy Valentine's Day!!!!

Even to you naysayers out there, I am happy to wish you a Happy Valentine's Day :)

This year, Dustin and I (but mostly I) wanted to do something fun to spread the love to some of the couples in our lives that have been influential on our views of love, and have made a huge impact on our relationship.

We went out on a particularly chilly afternoon and took some fun pictures outside of our apartment!

With our handy dandy new camera that we got for Christmas, it has been really fun experimenting with pictures! I love it.

I decided to print a few wallet-sized pictures, and make up a homemade Valentine to show our love to our family (and a few friends!).

I also got a Cuttlebug for Christmas, and I've been dying to try it out in cardmaking. I have absolutely zero experience in cardmaking....so I really had no idea where to start. For this project, I wanted to keep it simple. I vowed I would only use things that I already had in my apartment, a.k.a scissors, glue, sweetheart paper (that i had gotten years ago for a scrapbook project), a "delight in the little things" stamp, stickers, cream cardstock, and the plain white letter envelopes that we already had.

(Of course, that all went out the window when I saw some adorable glittery hearts and rhinestones at JoAnn's the night before I sent these out!)

So anywho. This is what I came up with! I had to do a thin rectangle card to fit in the boring envelopes, but I actually like the way they turned out. I hope you do, too!

They were all just the slightest bit different.

I finished them up by adding a pink ribbon with a little XOXO tag :)

They were a lot of fun!

I look forward to many more cardmaking projects in the future! :)

Our agenda for today is simple and fun, with lots of good food!

We're heading to Dickey's Barbecue Pit for lunch (Fried Okra, here I come!) with a mystery destination for dinner. I'm thinking it's somewhere we've never been before, so I'm excited! There's a lot of uncharted food territory for us in Lynchburg still, so it's fun to check great places off our list, and compare them to our favorites!

I really love food.

After dinner, we are debating between seeing The Vow and The Woman in Black.

Should we go for Romantic, or Scary?

It's a tough one.

After all, we did watch the entire Die Hard series on our honeymoon -- so we're a little unconventional.

Anywho!

I love you all and hope you have a fun-filled day, single or not, to celebrate the love that is in every relationship that we're blessed to be a part of :)

Happy Valentine's Day!

In love,

Cait

february is for girls

I have had some interesting encounters in the last few weeks.

Valentine's Day does some strange things to people.

I overheard an amusing conversation between two girls, saying that Valentine's Day made them sick. That they avoid it at all costs, because it's just a stupid day for spoiled rich girls to demand more of the men in their lives.

Did I mention that they said "hate" like "haaaaaaaaate", and that they were single?

We've also had an ongoing office conversation on this fiery topic. One opinion is that Valentine's Day is a completely ridiculous, corporation-driven holiday where people spends billions of dollars when they could be using that same money to better the world. I do agree with that -- if every single person in America that was going to buy a Valentine's Day card, or a bouquet of flowers, or a piece of jewelry, dedicated that amount of money to a good cause... it would be pretty monumental.

BUT -- what about birthdays? Christmas? Easter? Why are we buying chocolate eggs, when we can use that money to feed the children?

And, let's be honest -- any stastistic at its largest effect, combining every person in the US, is obviously ridiculous. I mean, I don't hear him complaining about the 28 million pounds of potato chips or the 325.5 million gallons of beer that are consumed on Super Bowl Sunday! And that's just disgusting!

The point is, if we're going to spend money on silly useless gifts like flowers and chocolate (and let's face it America, we ARE going to spend ridiculous amounts of money on useless gifts), then what better cause is there than love?

L-O-V-E.

(I also ought to mention that the owner of that opinion also stated that they buy their spouse flowers on an almost monthly basis -- so doesn't that mean they're spending even more money that could be better spent elsewhere??)

I motion that Valentine's Day doesn't have to be a corporation-driven holiday. It could be a time to dress up nice, and have a night in. Take time aside to write loves notes. And yes, we should be loving to one another on more than just one day a year -- but I think of all the money-wasting holidays out there, this is the least offensive! It encourages date nights and pretty flowers, bright cards and extra kisses.

Even before I had a husband or even a boyfriend, and even when I was little, I gave out cards to my bestest friends and was happy to see little paper hearts and red and pink decor everywhere.

I'm quite confused by the truly offended, hateful naysayers of St. Valentine.

On that note, here are some of my favorite choices for inexpensive, handmade, small business type gifts for this lovely month of February. :)

RED

 

 

SWEETS

FOR THE BIRTHDAY GIRL

(Amethyst is February's lovely stone!)





There are so many lovely things in the world.

And I, for one, am going to list Valentine's Day as one of them :)

In love,

Cait